How To Pick a Good Candidate for your CTC VISTA Position

It's true.  Most of the CTC VISTAs who apply for projects are fresh college grads.  While there are some folks (Boomers, even some Gen X'ers) who apply, the majority of us are fresh outta college and eager to jump in to our first 'real world' jobs.  But we lack experience.  We're sometimes too idealistic, unpracticed and yes, can need a LOT of support - and not even know how to ask for it.  That said, we also have A LOT of skills - particularly around research.  We're smart, über-connected and can learn *very* quickly.  We can learn ANYTHING.  With this in mind, here's some tips in selecting an appropriate candidate for your CTC VISTA position.

Things To Look For:

Connectedness
Do they have a blog?  What about a Facebook Account?  Twitter account?  Have you Google'd your VISTA candidates?

This should be a no brainer.  When you hire your VISTA, you also hire their network.  Repeat: when you hire your VISTA, you also hire their network.  While no VISTA is capable of doing everything alone (nor should you expect them to!), we *are* capable of achieving great things together.  We do this by staying connected through various online communication mediums - email, listservs, Google chat, Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook - even people in our 'offline' communities.  Knowing how to do something is never more than a few keystrokes (or a phone call) away.

Tip: we love staying connected to knowledge and resources necessary for our professional development.  Use this to your organization's advantage. 

Previous Experience
What were they involved with before?  What kinds of experience can *they* bring to your organization? Let 'em brag - and then test them on it.  Have a conversation about it.  Most of our experience may come from staying up late to finish papers or researching new methods, histories or tools of our academic focus.  How might these same skills apply to the tasks at hand?

Tip: Learn about your VISTA's previous experience.  They can draw from this throughout their year to overcome professional challenges. 

Confidence in Learning through Online Social Networks
We may have our email client, chat, Facebook and Twitter accounts open, but it doesn't mean we aren't working - we're learning.  We're fresh out of school and eager to test, experiment and learn more.  Within the professional context of 'work' informal learning and research is the name of the game here. Encourage this. 

Ask us to report back what we learn.   We're sometimes in a constant 'break out session'. What are we learning?  How does what we do online tie back to our offline work at the organization?  Through the process of interacting online, we can listen for and test new ideas, succeed (or fail) and integrate what we learn into our daily workflow.  Take advantage of this.

Tip: Social networks are the new internet (or university).  For an *optimum* CTC VISTA experience, ask your VISTA how they're socializing/experimenting - and to be honest - playing with the plethora of internet tools out there.  What can they scour from the big semi-open Internet to benefit your organization?  What should they listen for?  What things are happening online related to your organization's mission?